In the spring of 2010, I watched “Everyone Else” at the Independent Film Center in the West Village [NYC].

The film depicts a couple on vacation and their wavering emotional consistency within a week. There were no tragic deaths, plots to deceive an unfaithful lover, or detrimental tidal waves that threatened to destroy a major city and the lives that depend on its existence. This film, simply, illustrates the moments of tender playfulness that make up the simplest definition of “love” and the everyday hardships that occur within relationships that are continuously thrown beneath thin, silk rugs, only to be tripped over when aged wine on the top shelf is empty and the after-sex high has sunk below one’s realm of consciousness

The scenes are simple and subtle and completely real. The most powerful aspect of “Everyone else” is the abundance of everyday conversation that makes up the entirety of the film, which also happens to be one of its most realistic components. Although major visual occurrences do shock and intrigue us, it is the words that are spoken to us that continue to live in the cave of our minds as famished, hopeless savages that disconnect the stems of our brain cells, as we think and think and tear away the remains of our mental health.

I often drift off to sleep with nothing but words in me. They are in my fingertips, my thighs, the space between my nostrils. They shout and repeat and sing me to sleep with sweet melodies and unofficial intentions. These words, nothing but emotions that have been conceptualized and given syllables to hang from. Nothing but words. Nothing but emotion. They sleep with us, watch us make coffee in the morning, and drag us through this thing called “life”. There are some days when I do nothing but think about them.